Shay: Any Given Saturday, published by Trinity Mirror Sports Media, is on sale now.

Shay Given on The Bomb Squad

I had a poor summer at the Euros in 2012 and when I first met Paul Lambert after he came in to replace Alex McLeish, I got the feeling he wasn’t too keen on me as his first-choice keeper.

I went in to his office a couple of times to see him but the vibe wasn’t good.

He asked me how the Euros had been. “How’s your head, are you ok?”

It wasn’t positive stuff, he wasn’t telling me he rated me or that he wanted me as his No.1 and I’ll be honest, I probably needed to hear some reassurance at that stage, especially after a difficult summer.

I felt like he was just waiting for me to make a mistake and when Marouane Fellaini scored a goal for Everton early in the season that squirmed underneath me, he had his chance.

Paul wasn’t like that and it wasn’t in his nature to take a player to one side for a quiet chat. I got the feeling he wanted me off the wage bill and away from the club.

I don’t say that in a malicious way, Paul was feeling the squeeze from the boardroom to shift their big earners and I was one of those. I think it was probably more a financial decision than a football one.

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I’d walk past them in the morning on the way to the canteen and we’d raise a grin and a smile, as if to say, ‘What the **** is happening here?’ It was all a bit weird.

The Bomb Squad didn’t make much sense at all when you think about it. If you want to sell a car or a coat, do you put it on eBay or bury it at the back of the wardrobe or leave it shut away in the garage?

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If you want to sell players, don’t isolate them, don’t make them train with the reserves – put them in the first-team every week, get the best out of them, let people know they’re available and then you will get more interest.

I could never understand it from a business of point of view why they wouldn’t let us go.

Nobody was seeing us, nobody was matchfit, nobody was going on loan – but we were still getting paid our full wages. How does that add up? There’s no point putting something in the shop window then closing the curtains.